There is nothing childish about make believe, it should stay with us our entire lives. It makes us more aware of the diversity around us and in our history. I found these two at the Vincennes Rendezvous walking the grounds. I’m sure they both had this event on their calendar with a big star next to it. Playing the part of some of their heroes….

I had the pleasure of attending the Vincennes Indiana Rendezvous over the past weekend. I just love re-enactments with all the muskets blazing and this is an especially good one. All the vendors, food and otherwise, were selling things that were common for the period (early 1800s).

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The above scene it all too common on main street in rural America. Buildings which once housed thriving small businesses are now abandoned to the ravages of time. I wonder what it would take to re-purpose these sites to bring them back into use. It takes a creative person to figure that out but it is being done in some small towns…

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Mail Pouch signs are part of Americana. They might be faded now but still show up on many rural buildings. This one was recently found in the small town of Lyons in southern Indiana. But chewing tobacco is really a dirty messy habit.. 🙂

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I made my first camping trip for the year last week. I went to New Harmony Indiana and camped in Harmonie State Park. Only about 10% of the campground was filled. As you can see from the photo of my micro-RV I proudly advertise 2TouchTheSky on it.

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One of my recently discovered passions is to document the facades of small town America before they crumble into the dust of history. This one was found on the main street of New Harmony Indiana on a trip there this week. I have always been fascinated about facades but this discovery will cause me to start collecting them from my archives and adding more on my frequent road trips around the Midwest.

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Rust Belt is a appropriate term used to describe the once thriving mill towns of the Midwest. As Wikipedia says:

The Rust Belt is a term for the region straddling the upper Northeastern United States, the Great Lakes, and the Midwest States, referring to economic decline, population loss, and urban decay due to the shrinking of its once powerful industrial sector…

Pittsburgh is perhaps the epitome of that term. During my youth and beyond they were simply know as the “Steel Town”. They like many others in the area are gradually becoming a more diverse economy but Pittsburgh in particular still maintains it gritty persona… The picture taken here was from the Monongahela Incline above the city.

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I discovered something very basic about me recently. I am obsessed with reflection, doors, windows and other such things. I now have a photo portfolio that exceeds 18,000 pictures and many of them are of this genre. As above, I love to take my photo editing tools and create something that wasn’t quite there.

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I love to visit historic sites that have reenactors that is people who play roles of the historic event or site. Fort William in Thunder Bay, Ontario Canada is one of my top ten in that category. Yes Canada is very much in my search for America….

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You don’t know America if you have never eaten at a small town cafe. This one in Ennis Montana like so many others is proud of its heritage. We had breakfast there, a big place of sausage gravy and biscuits so didn’t have a change to try their strawberry pie… The biscuits were kind of hard but the gravy was very good.

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One of the problems with rural life is that the emergency services are not as quick as our urban brothers have. I took this picture around Townsend Montana a few years ago on our way to California. I wander if they saved much of the home? Probably not.. But it does make for a dramatic, and someway beautiful picture..